Digital daydreaming: Introducing the spontaneous smartphone checking scale

Smartphones are a ubiquitous part of many people's lives, but little is known about their impact on everyday thought processes. Here we introduce the spontaneous smartphone checking scale (SSCS)—which measures the tendency to direct attention toward one's smartphone, unpreceded by external prompts (e.g., notifications, or alerts) and with no specific conscious goal in mind, as a parallel to mind-wandering directed toward internal thoughts. The SSCS showed good psychometric properties and construct validity. It separated from measures of daydreaming and mind-wandering by not loading on dimensions related to self-consciousness, reflection, and rumination, but instead loading highly on a factor associated with other aspects of digital communication and concerns about public appearance on social media. This suggests that spontaneous smartphone checking serves different mental and social functions than internally generated spontaneous thought processes. We discuss possible long-term effects of spontaneous smartphone checking taking up time for internally generated spontaneous thoughts.     

An individual difference model for the multidimensional analysis of preference data

A model for the analysis of paired comparison data is presented which combines features of the BTL-model with features of the Unfolding model. The model is metric, mathematically tractable, and has an exact algebraic solution. Since it is multidimensional and allows for individual differences, it is thought to be more realistic for some choice situations than either the Thurstone model or the BTL-model. No claim is made that the present model will be appropriate for all conceivable choice situations. Rather, it is argued that the fact that it is explicitly falsifiable is a point in its favor.This work was supported by a grant of the United States Public Health Service (1 R03 MH19139 01 MSM) and a David Ross (XR) grant of the Purdue Research Foundation (PRF 2132), both of which are gratefully acknowledged. We also owe thanks to Dr. Terry Cooper, whose careful scrutiny of an earlier draft of this paper allowed us to reduce the number of errors from n to n-1.     

Some new results on factor indeterminacy

Some relations between maximum likelihood factor analysis and factor indeterminacy are discussed. Bounds are derived for the minimum average correlation between equivalent sets of correlated factors which depend on the latent roots of the factor intercorrelation matrix . Empirical examples are presented to illustrate some of the theory and indicate the extent to which it can be expected to be relevant in practice.     

Early judgments of semantic and syntactic acceptability by children

Judgments of the acceptability of correct, word order reversed, and semantically anomalous sentences were elicited from 2- and 3-year-old children in a game played with hand puppets. All of the sentences used were simple imperatives and each child was asked to correct those he called wrong. Performance on the judgment task was correlated with each child's mean length of utterance and with his comprehension of reversible active and passive sentences. Only the linguistically most advanced children were able to make a significant number of appropriate judgments and corrections of reversed word order imperatives. Less developed children could appropriately judge and correct semantically anomalous but not incorrect word order imperatives. The importance of semantic as opposed to syntactic factors in children's judgments of the acceptability of sentences is stressed.This research was supported in part by PHS Grant HD-02908 from the National Institute of Child Health and Development. Roger Brown is the principal investigator.     

Air-puff-elicited startle: Habituation over trials and measurement of a hypothetical emotional response

In the first of two experiments, it was demonstrated that an air puff elicited a reliable startle reflex in rats which showed no habituation over 50 trials. In the second study an attempt was made to measure an emotional response by recording startle reactions to the air puff during presentation of a presumed fear-eliciting CS. It was concluded that the air-puff-elicited startle reflex can be employed as an indirect measure of a hypothetical emotional response.     

The knower and the known

This paper is a presentation and discussion of Spinoza's view on the knower, or the mind, as an agent. The knower is on his view to be regarded as an active or generative complex cognitive experience. Imagination, reason and intuition are the cognitive principles. On account of their intrinsic relation to “the first law of nature”, that of selfpreservation, together with the thesis of the mind as constituted by ideas or knowledge, these principles function at the same time as moral principles. Consequently, it makes sense to speak of an individual's moral attitude toward everything be knows. A discussion of imagination, reason and intuition mainly as cognitive principles is followed by some concluding remarks on the cognitive and moral relation between human beings: To know another human being is to know his knowledge. The moral attitude of individuals to each other is a function of their mutual knowledge of knowledge.     

Statistical methods for a general theory of all-or-none learning

Greeno and Steiner have shown that a three state Markov Chain with a single absorbing state is equivalent to many of the current formalizations of All-or-None learning theories. Distribution statistics and other summary statistics are derived from the general model. Expressions for the maximum likelihood estimators of its parameters and the sampling variances of the estimates are presented. Likelihood ratio tests for several different null hypotheses are derived. These tests permit one to evaluate the usual null hypotheses in terms of the parameters of a process model.This research was supported in part by a USPHS Predoctoral Research Fellowship, 1-F1-MH-31-289-01, by a grant from the Graduate School of the University of Texas, and by grant HD-02212-01 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to Dr. John Theios.     

A technique for the construction of discrete dichotic stimulation material

Procedures are described for the generation, synchronization. and accurate spacing of discrete dichotic stimulation material. A suggested standard definition of interpair interval is proposed.